56 pages • 1 hour read
Holly GramazioThe Husbands
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Lauren returns to her flat after a night out celebrating her friend Elena’s upcoming wedding to discover a strange man on the staircase. She rushes outside as he calls her name. Lauren grabs her cell phone and—just before the phone’s battery dies—sees that she and the man are pictured on its screen. She notices, too, that she is suddenly wearing a wedding ring.
The man brings her a glass of water and some pajamas; Lauren prepares to sleep on the sofa. She secures a chair underneath the door to prevent the man from reentering.
Chapter 2 Summary
Lauren wakes and the husband is cooking in the kitchen. After dressing, she agrees to eat a sandwich that he sets in front of her, surprised by how good it is. Several things within her flat have changed, though a few are the same. She tells the husband that she is going to take a walk to clear her head. While out, she scrolls through her phone, finding photos of the night before, but also photos of the husband as well as messages from him. His name appears to be Michael. After speaking with her neighbor and doing some googling, Lauren discerns her wedding date, her husband’s last name, and the architecture firm he works for. She tries phoning her sister, Natalie, in hopes of learning more that will explain Michael’s existence, but her young nephew answers the phone.
Later, returning home with the lightbulb Michael has asked her to buy, Lauren is surprised to discover a different husband in his place.
Chapter 3 Summary
Chapter 4 Summary
The new husband is carrying bath towels, which he and Lauren argue about briefly. The husband goes out for a run. While he is gone, Lauren discovers that several items in her flat have changed. Some photos are also missing from her phone and her hair is long. It seems that she is being provided with a new husband each time the existing one proves to be flawed in some way.
She devises a plan while the new husband, Kieran, is out for a run. Lauren installs a Bluetooth speaker in the attic. She sets her phone to a YouTube channel that plays an ASMR video of running water.
Chapter 5 Summary
Though the sound of running water fails to coax Kieran to enter the attic, he does soon ascend there on his own accord. Lauren initially likes his replacement, and when he offers to make her a coffee, she accepts. She asks him to stay away from the attic, explaining she had a premonition of him falling from the ladder.
They drink their coffee in the garden; Lauren discovers that many of the missing photos have returned to her phone. She decides she will stick with this husband for a while.
Chapter 6 Summary
They chat in the garden, and when the husband goes inside, Lauren phones her sister Natalie. Natalie insists she is too busy to talk, but Lauren quickly asks her thoughts on her husband. Natalie assures her that she does like Jason, and then Lauren asks her if she has ever noticed anything strange about the attic (Natalie is co-owner of the flat). Natalie worries Lauren is referring to the water heater acting up.
That night, Lauren convinces Jason that she is coming down with a cold, and he offers to sleep in the guest bedroom. Lauren searches her phone once more, hoping to uncover information about her life with Jason. She learns she is the manager of a hardware store.
On Monday, she sends a sick notification to her job.
Chapter 7 Summary
Jason says goodbye as he leaves for work in the morning. Alone, Lauren considers going to the hospital but instead goes to a bar where she orders a coffee and a cocktail. She asks her mother via text message for her thoughts on Jason. Her mother, like her sister, says she likes him. Lauren decides she must speak with Elena and offers to help her with some wedding projects that evening.
When Lauren returns home in the afternoon, Jason is there showering. He proposes sex and Lauren agrees. Afterward, she heads to Elena’s, having searched the internet unsuccessfully for information on husbands appearing from attics. When Elena asks Lauren what she wishes to discuss, Lauren says her attic causes husbands to magically appear.
Chapter 8 Summary
Elena jokes about Lauren’s revelation but does not appear to take it seriously. They work on wedding projects, and Lauren asks Elena to explain what she likes about Jason. Lauren consents to being seated at the same table as her ex, Amos.
The next morning, Lauren tells Jason that her cold has returned. She investigates the attic, noting that both her phone and a flashlight behave strangely while there. She posts some questions in an online forum but finds the responses unhelpful.
The following day—Wednesday—she again calls in sick to work and spends her afternoon retracing her steps from Saturday. This provides her with no information about the husbands or the attic.
On Thursday, Lauren goes to work, though she is unsure what her job entails: Each new husband comes with an altered life, and this job was not part of her life before Jason arrived. She fakes her way through the day. That night when Jason chews his dinner with his mouth open, Lauren decides she must send him back to the attic.
Chapter 9 Summary
Lauren quickly rejects the next three husbands who appear, sending them back to the attic immediately. When the fourth one appears, she decides to stick with him when she discovers her sister—whom she has been able to spend little time with since her sister had children—is lying in her living room. Lauren invents an excuse to take Natalie to the pub without the husband.
Over drinks, she learns that the new husband’s name is Ben and that they have been married for four years. After some slip-ups, Lauren discovers that Natalie is not married and has no children. Not wanting this life—her sister is upset over the break-up with her spouse—Lauren knows she must send Ben back. She phones him from the bathroom and invents an excuse to send him into the attic. When she exits the bathroom, Natalie is gone. Lauren phones her to find her at home with her children.
Chapter 10 Summary
The new husband, Rohan, is performing in a play. Lauren finds him quirky and charming. He wears part of his Elizabethan-era costume at home and Lauren approaches him for sex, which he keeps the costume on for. In the afternoon, he goes to rehearsal, and Lauren—though feeling like she should research who Rohan is—is tired and therefore does nothing.
That evening they have dinner with their neighbors: Toby and Maryam. When they arrive, Lauren is certain that Rohan and Maryam are flirting, then fears they are having an affair. Having always idealized Toby and Maryam’s relationship as the perfect marriage, she is angered. However, when Maryam kisses Lauren playfully, she wonders if they are instead swingers. Either way, she cannot tolerate this new behavior of Maryam. She makes an excuse to run back home, then heads to the attic, waiting for Rohan to arrive to check on her. Instead, it is Toby who comes looking for her.
Chapter 11 Summary
Lauren tries explaining the magic attic to Toby, but he is confused. She asks him if they are indeed engaged in swinging and he confirms this. Together, they investigate the attic, discovering a strange glowing light. Toby suggests Lauren contact an electrician.
Lauren and Toby find themselves kissing, and then having sex. Lauren decides she must be more careful about which husband she allows to enter her life. The next morning, she sends Rohan upstairs and he is replaced by Iain, a painter, whom she rejects after quickly discovering he complains often. She rejects the next husband quickly too, and he is replaced by her ex-boyfriend, Amos, whom Lauren knows she must also send back. The fourth, fifth, and sixth husbands she also swiftly rejects. Lauren finally settles on a husband named Gorcher, solely because he is wearing a suit and she decides he will at least look good enough to accompany her to Elena’s wedding.
Chapters 1-11 Analysis
The appearance of the first husband, Michael, represents the novel’s first significant break with the expectations of realism. This event upends Lauren’s expectations of reality as well, and she initially seeks a rational explanation: She has been drinking, and perhaps she has been drugged and is hallucinating. Her need to understand what is happening drives the conflict of the first few chapters. As Lauren turns to her cellular phone for help, the novel explores Technology’s Impact on Relationships. In this first episode, it proves to Lauren that she is in fact married—as if the digital record preserved in her phone were more trustworthy than her own memory. The phone becomes her only authoritative source of information about her life, depicting her in pictures with Michael, listing message exchanges between her and Michael, and offering up emails and other documentation that helps Lauren piece together what her new life consists of. Though she is puzzled and proceeds with caution in her interactions with Michael, the information stored in the phone leads her to accept this relationship as real.
Once Lauren realizes that the husbands are appearing from the attic, she accepts this altered reality without giving it much second thought. This acceptance of a seemingly impossible premise is characteristic of magical realism. Lauren does not try to challenge or “fix” the attic, nor does she think deeply about its implications regarding free will or the nature of her own existence; instead, she focuses on how she might benefit from this new, unexpected feature of her home. With the first few husbands, Lauren cannot tolerate seemingly innocuous aspects of their personalities. These tiny flaws prompt her to “exchange” the husband for a new one. In this way, Lauren demonstrates the theme of The Illusion of Control: Since the supply of husbands appears infinite, she believes she has the power to control every aspect of her future husband, and in this context, even minor sources of friction appear intolerable. Lauren never has to worry about the husband rejecting her or finding fault with her qualities. Each husband is at the mercy of Lauren’s preferences.
A secondary benefit of the magical attic swiftly becomes even more consequential than the steady supply of husbands. Lauren realizes that her life with each husband is self-contained: When she rejects a husband, everything that happened in her life with that husband is wiped away—a “reset,” as she will come to call this phenomenon. As a result, her actions have no lasting consequences. If she fails to go to work, it will not matter; she need not risk loss of pay, demotion, or even the loss of her job because she can easily “reset” by sending the current husband to the attic and thus instituting a completely new life. This lack of repercussions initially feels freeing to Lauren, and she focuses on this rather than trying to discern how the attic works. Over time, The Illusion of Control becomes a trap, as Lauren comes to believe that by finding the perfect husband, she can also find the perfect life. Rather than making choices to incrementally improve the life she has, she continually throws away imperfect lives and begins new ones, imagining that a completely satisfying life will eventually land in her lap.
Lauren acknowledges the physical awkwardness she feels around each husband. Though she knows that it is logical to assume that they have been physically intimate already, doing so now feels strange. Without the period of getting to know one another, Lauren is apprehensive and uncomfortable, and for some time, she avoids physical contact and intimacy through various excuses. When she decides to engage in sex, she searches for physical chemistry, certain that some kind of sign will appear that she is or is not meant to be with a particular husband. Thus, Lauren continues her search for what she assumes will be the mate best suited to her.
A substantial factor in Lauren’s decision to keep or reject a husband is how she perceives he will be accepted by others in her life. With the early husbands, she phones her sister Natalie or best friend Elena to gauge their opinion of the husband, often even directly asking for their opinion of the husband. In part, Lauren is trying to determine what initially attracted her to the husband but as the section unfolds, it becomes apparent that the opinions of others—and public appearances—are important to Lauren. She accepts Gorcher because she feels his outward appearance will impress those in attendance at Elena’s wedding. She does not want to embarrass herself by being affiliated with other husbands’ strange habits—such as Jason’s odd chewing—and thus takes advantage of the attic’s power to remove these embarrassing husbands from her life.
